On this winter night, when other city restaurants are deserted, customers will go to Winston's for its signature hot jerk chicken, curry goat and other savory Caribbean favorites — a sign of the subtle renaissance that is taking place on what was once one of Allentown's most problematic streets.

A cold blast of air floods the store as two customers emerge from the night, bundled in jackets.

"Hey! How you doing, man?" Barnes says loudly, his tired eyes coming to life as he recognizes the federal workers who stand before him.

"There he is," one of the men says pointing at Barnes, a smile crawling across his face. "What's going on?"

"I've been missing you guys' money, that's all," Barnes says. All three erupt into laughter.

"Oh yeah? Well, we've got five orders for you."

Down the street from Winston's, a gaping hole cuts into the ground where Seventh Street meets the city's downtown. The PPL Center hockey arena under construction is expected to draw half a million visitors a year and stimulate the city's economy when it opens in 2014.

No one knows how the $272 million complex — which includes the arena, a hotel and office and retail space — will affect Seventh Street, which in the past few years has quietly transformed from a gritty corridor to a vibrant community where people live, shop, dine and socialize. Shop owners, restaurateurs and Seventh Street's champions hope it will help rather than hinder the renewal that has occurred gradually and organically.

A shift to the suburbs

Although Hamilton Street always had been Allentown's premier shopping district, in the 1950s and '60s Seventh Street was an equally bustling stretch of smaller retailers and professional offices. Anchored by a few large stores such as the Sears, Roebuck and Co. at Seventh and Allen streets, the city's gateway from the north was lined with jewelry, dress and hat shops, photography studios and upholstery stores.

David Bausch, the former city councilman and head of Lehigh County government who has lived all of his 81 years on Seventh Street, remembers shops filled with people chatting with clerks, trying on shoes, waiting for prescriptions. The farmers market at Seventh and Liberty was busy with city folks hankering for the fresh produce from nearby farms.

Restaurants on the street catered to the many professionals who set up shop.

"The lawyers would come downtown, and they would stay downtown," he said.

But by the late 1970s and '80s, the business community was beginning to fade. Suburban shopping malls lured customers, and the white flight that plagued cities across the country sent Allentown residents searching for bigger houses and larger lots in the suburbs.

One by one, anchor retailers like the Army Navy store, BF Goodrich and Sears that were once the backbone of the neighborhood closed their doors. Landlords, unable to rent retail spaces to new merchants, converted stores into apartments, hiding original architecture beneath layers of paint and siding.

Less than a decade ago, 55 percent of the Seventh Street storefronts were vacant. City officials searched for a solution.

They hired Peter Lewnes to find it.

The 'eye' of Allentown

At the head of a long table set with at least a dozen plates, Lewnes, Seventh Street's Main Street manager, leans against the window in one of the neighborhood's newest restaurants. Outside, crews on ladders put the finishing touches on the building's burnt yellow trim and prepare to hang the "Mariam's" sign — the final step in its transformation.

Inside, Lewnes chats happily with a half-dozen co-workers from the nearby Seventh Street Development Committee as they dig into a feast of sambusas stuffed with ground beef, onions and jalapenos; beef sauted in Ethiopian butter with onions; and doro dat, a spicy chicken stew served with a boiled egg.

The heavy smell of incense floods the room as Mariam's owner Beleteshachew "Bele" Mulata emerges from the kitchen carrying a tray with a black ceramic pitcher of Ethiopian coffee and a smoking incense burner. The group oohs and ahs with delight as she pours the steaming beverage into palm-sized cups.

"This whole corner was taken over by drugs and alcohol," Lewnes says. "The business was empty, and the city considered it blighted. And all of a sudden, I'd see a woman sweeping outside. I ran after her."

That was in fall 2011. Lewnes found out that Mulata had bought the building in the 400 block of Seventh Street with her husband, Ebisa Mulata, and planned to rent the upstairs apartments. In the building's long vacant storefront, they would showcase some of Bele Mulata's talents.